As I Remember Part 21

The Maryland mountaineers, as I knew them, were very similar in life and character to those in North Carolina, of whom more or less has been written the last few years. They had peculiar customs as well as quaint modes of action and expression, and invented names for things and conditions to suit themselves. I remember, for example, that when persons showed signs of physical illness and the exact nature of their maladies was uncertain they were said to have "the gobacks." Frederick County was settled by the early Germans and many of their expressions are still in vogue. A peach dried whole with the seed retained is called a _hutzel_, and dried apples are _snitz_. In this connection I am reminded of a German family named House, which resided in Frederick and consisted of four maiden sisters. Their means were limited and they eked out their living by stamping from original designs and taking in plain sewing. Their front door was always locked and bolted, and to reach the inmates it was necessary to pa.s.s through a gate leading into a long alley and thence through a scrupulously clean kitchen and up the steep and narrow back stairs to a small rear room, where sat these four spinsters. The first one who met you said, "Good-morning," and the others repeated the salutation in turn until the last one was reached, who simply said, "Morning." This laughable procedure was followed in their subsequent conversation, for one of them had only to lead off with a remark and the others repeated the close of it. It is said that Crissie, the youngest of the quartette, once had a beau with whom she sat each night for many years in their prim parlor and that, when he finally jilted her, one of her sisters was heard to remark, _apropos_ of the broken engagement: "Just think of all them candles wasted!"

The second winter of our Maryland life was spent at a hotel in Frederick where we formed a lasting friendship with our fellow boarders, Judge and Mrs. John A. Lynch. With my historical as well as social tastes, I found the McPherson household a source of great pleasure and intellectual profit to me. I knew Mrs. "f.a.n.n.y" McPherson, as she was invariably called, only as an elderly woman who retained all the graces and charms of youth. To listen to her tales of bygone days was a pleasure upon which I even yet delight to dwell. She lived to a very great age surrounded by her children, her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren, and went to her grave beloved by all. She was the granddaughter of Thomas Johnson, the first Governor of Maryland. I remember reading on one occasion a letter which she took great pride in showing me, written to her grandfather by Washington, offering him the position of Secretary of State in his cabinet. This flattering offer he declined, but to him is said to belong the honor of having nominated Washington as Commander in Chief of the Army.

Mrs. McPherson was nearly related to Mrs. John Quincy Adams, who was Louisa Catharine Johnson of this same Maryland family, and, as she was an occasional visitor at the White House during her relative's residence there, she mingled with many prominent people. I recall a weird story she once told me in connection with a daughter of Smith Thompson, Secretary of the Navy under President Monroe. It seems she married the Viscount Paul Alfred de Bresson, the third Secretary of the French Emba.s.sy in Washington, and subsequently many elaborate entertainments were given in her honor in Washington. She returned with her husband to Europe and several months later her family received the announcement of her death. As they had only recently received a letter from her, when apparently she was in the best of health and spirits, they felt somewhat skeptical and wrote at once for more definite information. A few weeks later a package reached them containing her heart preserved in alcohol.

Mrs. McPherson's older daughter, Mrs. Worthington Ross, lived with her mother and ministered with loving hands to her wants in her old age, while the remainder of her life was devoted to unselfish labor in her Master's vineyard. Her memory, as well as that of her only child, f.a.n.n.y McPherson Ross, who pa.s.sed onward and upward before her, is still revered in Frederick.

Mr. Gouverneur and I also formed a pleasant acquaintance with Rev. Dr.

John McElroy, whose remarkable career in the Catholic Church is well worthy of notice. Coming to this country as a mere lad, he engaged in mercantile pursuits in Georgetown, D.C., and when about sixteen years of age became a lay Jesuit and in 1817 entered the priesthood. After ministering to Trinity church in Georgetown for several years, he was transferred, at the request of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, to Frederick, where he built St. John's church, a college, an academy, an orphan asylum, and the first free school in the city. After remaining there for twenty-three years and establishing a reputation for devotion to his church and rare executive ability that made him one of the most useful Jesuits in the country, he was sent back to his old church in Georgetown and the following year went to the Mexican War as Chaplain in the regiment commanded by Caleb Cushing. During our occasional conversations it seemed to afford him more than usual pleasure to discuss with me the ability of his distinguished military chief. After the war he was sent to Boston, where he became pastor of St. Mary's church, and built the Boston College and the Church of the Immaculate Conception. At the age of ninety, he became blind and retired to the scene of his early labors in Frederick, where, as the oldest Jesuit in the world, he died in the fall of 1877. I remember meeting him one day on the street when he proudly announced that it was his birthday and that he was sixty-nine years of age. I knew him to be much older, and my words of astonishment evidently revived his senses for, realizing that he had reversed his figures, he corrected himself by adding, "I mean ninety-six." At that time he was quite active, considering his extreme age, and to the close of his life was much respected and beloved by the residents of Frederick, irrespective of creed. I attended his funeral and he was laid to rest in the burying ground of the old Novitiate which he founded. It was then that I saw for the first time the grave of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. The two-story brick house in Frederick in which he lived is still standing, but it would be regarded with contempt by any of the present Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.

But how natural, for how changed are the times! In an eloquent address subsequent to Taney's death, Charles O'Conor concluded with these words: "May the future historian in writing of Judge Roger B. Taney sorrowfully add, _Ultimus Romanorum_."

Francis Scott Key, the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner," is also buried in Frederick soil. For many years his remains reposed in an unnoticed grave in Mount Olivet Cemetery but, through the efforts of the citizens of Frederick, and especially of its women, an imposing monument now towers above him surmounted by a superb male figure with outstretched arms. While living in Maryland I frequently met Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase at the residence of Mrs. Margaret Goldsborough, and was much impressed by his imposing presence and courtly bearing.

Many years before, he had been a tutor in the Frederick College, which still survives and whose walls bear the inscription "1797." Mrs.

Goldsborough was a lifelong resident of Frederick and a woman of a high degree of intelligence. Her daughter, Miss Mary Catharine Goldsborough, I always numbered among my most cherished friends.

After a pleasant sojourn of a number of months in Frederick, we went to spend the summer at _Po-ne-sang_, where we had the satisfaction of entertaining quite a number of old friends, among whom was the Hon.

Lafayette S. Foster, then Vice-President _pro tempore_ of the United States. Maryland was a familiar as well as a cherished State to him, as in early life he had been a tutor in Centerville on the "Eastern Sh.o.r.e."

Mr. Foster's visit was decidedly uneventful to him, as he was there entirely unheralded and without even a newspaper notice to announce his coming and going.

CHAPTER XIV

VISIT TO THE FAR SOUTH AND RETURN TO WASHINGTON

In the autumn of the same year I decided to make a long antic.i.p.ated visit to Mrs. John Still Winthrop in Tallaha.s.see, whose marriage in Gramercy Park I had attended so many years ago and which I have already described. My two younger children accompanied me, but my oldest daughter I left behind under her father's protecting care at the Misses Vernon's boarding school in Frederick. This period seemed especially suitable for such a long absence, as the whole time and attention of Mr.

Gouverneur was engrossed in editing for publication a posthumous work of James Monroe, which was subsequently published by the Lippincotts under the t.i.tle, "The People the Sovereigns." We sailed from New York and stopped _en route_ in Savannah to enable me to see my old friend and schoolmate, Mrs. William Neyle Habersham. Sherman in his "March to the Sea" had pa.s.sed through Georgia, carrying with him destruction and devastation, and the suffering which this and other campaigns of the war had brought into the homes of these Southern people it would be difficult to describe. The whole South seemed to be shrouded in mourning, as nearly everyone I met had given up to the "Lost Cause" a husband or a son, and in some cases both. Two gallant sons of the Habershams, mere boys, had died upon the same battlefield, and when I saw Mr. Habersham for the first time after the war he was so overcome with grief that he was obliged to leave the room. Talented to an unusual degree and possessing much fort.i.tude, his wife fought bravely for the sake of her dear ones still spared her, but every now and then her sorrow a.s.serted itself anew and seemed more than her bleeding soul could bear. She was especially gifted with her pen, and about ten years after the war, while her heart was still wrung with grief, she wrote the following pathetic lines:--

Up above, the Pines make sweet music; sad, plaintive, for must there not be a tone of "infinite sadness" in all the places of Earth's finite gladness? From a spray of jessamine I hear the chirp of a little bird--a young beginner; it tries over and over again "its one plain pa.s.sage of few notes"--the prelude to the full-voice anthem which summer will harmonize. Ah! what shades and sunlight! what coloring!

Green in the gra.s.s and trees, blue in the violets and sky, gray in the moss, yellow in the jessamines, falling around in a perfect Danaean shower of burnished gold! My truant fancy sees all this--and more! A dear hand that held mine, a "pure hand," a boy's hand, that ere many summers had spread out their gorgeous pageantry had drawn the sword for that dear summer-land of the jessamine and pine--had drawn the sword and dropped it; dropped it from the earnest, vigorous clasp of glorious young manhood to lie still and calm, life's duty n.o.bly done; ah, a short young life but ... and then the other young soldier! for is not my sorrow a twin sorrow? Can they be dissevered? In death they were not divided. My eyes grow dim. Wipe away the mist, poor mother!

to see the dear faces of sons and daughters gracing the board. Let the blue of the violets breathe to thee rather of endless skies and an eternal Heaven, where earth's finite sadness is beautified into infinite gladness.

We finally reached Tallaha.s.see, where we found the most cordial welcome awaiting us. Mrs. Winthrop lived in the very heart of the city but our surroundings were much more beautiful than I can describe, for the orange trees and hyacinths and jessamine in full bloom and other wealth of semi-tropical vegetation were suggestive of an earthly Paradise.

Since we last met my hostess had become a widow, but fortunately she and her only son, who was then just emerging into manhood, had not felt the personal vicissitudes of the struggle, as they had taken refuge in the mountains of North Carolina. Before the war the Winthrops had owned hundreds of slaves and most of them, in a state of freedom, were still living in quarters only a short distance from the house and were working on her plantations just as though the war had not made them free. But both among those who suffered from the war and those who escaped its ravages the unfriendly feeling entertained at this time against their Northern brethren was naturally intense. I remember that one Sunday morning a young son of Mrs. Custis, who with his mother was then an inmate of the Winthrop household, asked his mother, who had just returned from the early service of the Episcopal Church, whether "the 'Yankees' went up to the same communion table with the Southern people."

During my Tallaha.s.see life I made the acquaintance of Madame Achille Murat, who lived in an old mansion outside of the city limits. She was Miss Catharine A. Willis of Virginia, and a great-grandniece of General Washington. Upon her marriage to Achille Murat he took her abroad, where she was received with much distinction on account of her Washington blood. Then, too, her marriage into such an ill.u.s.trious French family was an open sesame to the most exclusive circles of society. She was an elderly woman when I met her, but her conversation abounded with the most interesting reminiscences of her life in France. She died in the summer of 1867. Achille Murat was the son of Joachim Murat, the great Marshal of Napoleon, whose sister Caroline he married and became King of Naples. Many years later his two sons came to this country. One of them settled in Bordentown in New Jersey, and Achille Murat, after his marriage to his Virginia bride, became a resident of Florida. Madame Murat told me of some of the visits she made to France when the voyage was long and tedious. She had many articles of _vertu_ around her, and I especially recall a superb marble bust by Canova of her mother-in-law, Queen Caroline. I expressed surprise at the extreme attractiveness of the late Queen, as I had always understood that the Princess Pauline, Napoleon's other sister, was the family beauty. Madame Murat, however, told me I was mistaken and that her royal mother-in-law was, in that respect, quite the equal of her sister.

During my acquaintance with Madame Murat, Napoleon III. was on the throne of France, and I learned from our many friendly chats that her relations with her distinguished kinspeople were of the most cordial character; and I am informed that for many years the Emperor gave her an annuity. Hanging in her drawing-room, whose contents were replete with historic a.s.sociation, were two handsome portraits of the Emperor and Empress of France, which she called to my attention as recent gifts from her royal relatives. That prince of hosts, Gouverneur Kemble, once told me an amusing incident _apropos_ of Achille Murat's resourcefulness under peculiar difficulties. On one occasion quite a number of foreign guests appeared at the Frenchman's door and, although Florida is a land "flowing with milk and honey," he was sorely perplexed to know what would be "toothsome and succulent" to serve for their repast. Suddenly an idea flashed upon him. He owned a large flock of sheep and, nothing daunted, gave immediate orders to have the tips of their ears cut off.

These were served in due form, and his guests departed in total ignorance of what they had eaten but fully convinced that America produced the choicest of viands.

Upon one of her numerous visits to France, Madame Murat was accompanied to the Louvre by Mr. Francis Porteus Corbin, a Virginian whose contemporaries proudly a.s.serted was an adornment to any court. While they were engaged in viewing the works of art, Madame Murat was joined by Jerome Bonaparte, to whom she formally presented Mr. Corbin. When the opportunity arose Bonaparte inquired of his kinswoman who "the elegant gentleman" was. The ready response was: "Mr. Corbin, of Virginia."

"Well," was the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, "I had no idea there was so much elegance in America."

I think these pages will show that all through life I have had a decided fancy for older men and women. I can hardly account for this taste except by the fact that my predilections have always been of a decidedly historical character. As another instance, I especially enjoyed my meeting in the far South with Judge Thomas Randall, who made his home in Tallaha.s.see, but who was originally from Annapolis. He did not allow advanced years to interfere with his social tastes, but frequently accompanied us to parties, where his vivacity rendered him one of the most acceptable of guests. Still another elderly gentleman with whom I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted during this Southern sojourn was Francis Wayles Eppes. He was the son of U.S. Senator John Wayles Eppes, whose wife was Maria Jefferson, elder daughter of Thomas Jefferson. He left Virginia many years prior to my acquaintance with him and settled with several members of the Randolph family in Western Florida when it was almost a wilderness.

I left with keen regret this picturesque land of flowers and stately oaks, but duty called me home, as my husband and little daughter were growing impatient over our long absence. It would seem that the observance of timetables differed in those days according to localities and other circ.u.mstances. I was informed that the train I should take from Tallaha.s.see would leave _about_ such and such a time; but upon my inquiring in Savannah as to whether the ship upon which I proposed to embark for Baltimore would leave on time, I was explicitly told by its captain that if I were a minute late I should not be one of its pa.s.sengers.

After my return to Maryland, the home of our adoption, we abandoned the idea of country life, sold our residence and took up our abode in Frederick. My children were now reaching an age when education became an important matter and I took advantage of the Frederick Female Seminary, an inst.i.tution that has since become a college, as an excellent place to which to send my eldest daughter. It was during this period of transition that it was my good fortune to meet for the first time the wife of the Hon. Henry Ga.s.saway Davis of West Virginia, who was a native of Frederick and a daughter of Gideon Bantz. Her two older daughters, Hallie, the widow of U.S. Senator Stephen B. Elkins, and Kate, who subsequently became the wife of Robert M. G. Brown of the U.S. Navy, were boarding pupils at the same school; and Mrs. Davis frequently visited them while there. My daughters formed an intimate friendship with Mrs. Brown, whom at a later day we often welcomed as a guest in our Washington home. She has since pa.s.sed "over the river," having survived her mother for only a few months, and her memory is hallowed in my family circle. Mrs. Elkins, the promising young girl of so many years ago, is widely known in Washington and elsewhere for her womanly tact, intelligence and fine presence. Grace, another of Mrs. Davis' daughters, is now Mrs. Arthur Lee of Washington, but was born after my earlier acquaintance with her mother in Frederick. Loved and admired, she resides in Washington surrounded by an exclusive coterie, and devotes much of her time and means to works of philanthropy.

The prominent auth.o.r.ess, Mrs. Elizabeth F. Ellet, was repeatedly our guest while we were living in Frederick. A volume of her poems had appeared as early as 1835, and she subsequently published quite a number of books which were highly regarded. When she first came to visit us, her "Women of the American Revolution" had just appeared and her journey to Maryland was for the purpose of collecting data for a new work which later was published under the t.i.tle of "The Court Circles of the Republic." Besides being a gifted writer, Mrs. Ellet had considerable histrionic ability, and I have now before me an old newspaper clipping containing an account of an entertainment given by me in her honor when she recited from "Pickwick Papers", "Widow Bedott" and "The Lost Heir."

Another party at which music and recitations were a prominent feature was given to Mrs. Ellet in Frederick by Mrs. Charles E. Trail, a gifted woman who thoroughly appreciated intellectual accomplishments wherever found.

My first acquaintance with the Hon. Joseph Holt, who at the time was Judge Advocate General of the Army, began in Frederick in 1869. He was a Kentuckian by birth and, after serving for a time as Postmaster General under President Buchanan, succeeded, in 1860, John B. Floyd of Virginia as Secretary of War. He made frequent visits to Frederick where he was always the guest of the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. George Diehl. He was a typical Kentuckian, over six feet tall, and in my opinion no one could have known him well without being impressed by his intellectual ability.

After we returned to Washington to live, in 1873, Judge Holt was a constant visitor at our home and I frequently attended handsome entertainments given in his residence on Capitol Hill. Although I have been in society more or less all of my life, I can say without hesitancy that he more perfectly understood and practiced the art of entertaining--it certainly _is_ an art, and possessed by but few--than any other person I have ever known. His second wife, who was Miss Margaret Anderson Wickliffe of Kentucky, had died in 1860 and, as he had no children, he was living entirely alone.

From my earliest acquaintance with Judge Holt I was deeply impressed by the cloud of sadness that seemed to envelop him, and I never learned until I had known him many years and really called him my friend that he was laboring under a deep sense of wrong and injustice. Without entering into exhaustive details, the main facts are substantially these: In 1865 Mr. Holt was Judge Advocate General of the Army and as such was the prosecuting officer before the Military Commission convened by order of President Johnson for the trial of Mrs. Mary E. Surratt and others for complicity in the a.s.sa.s.sination of Lincoln. The findings and sentence of the Commission were accompanied by a recommendation signed by a majority of its members in which they "respectfully pray the President, in consideration of the s.e.x and age of the said Mary E. Surratt, if he can, upon all the facts in the case, find it consistent with his sense of duty to the country, to commute the sentence of death, which the Court have been constrained to p.r.o.nounce, to imprisonment in the penitentiary for life." This recommendation for executive clemency remained unknown to the public until it was incidentally referred to by the Hon. Edwards Pierrepont, counsel for the government in the trial of Mrs. Surratt's son in 1867. This was followed in subsequent years, and after Andrew Johnson had ceased to be President, by a controversy in which reflections were made upon the personal and official integrity of Judge Holt by the charge that he had never presented the recommendation for clemency to the President. The matter finally sifted itself down to a question of personal veracity between the ex-President and Judge Holt, in which the latter affirmed that "he drew the President's attention specially to the recommendation in favor of Mrs. Surratt, which he read and freely commented on"; and was contradicted by the ex-President in the a.s.sertion that "in acting upon her case no recommendation for a commutation of her punishment was mentioned or submitted to me."

The enemies of Holt accordingly held him indirectly responsible for Mrs.

Surratt's execution, and against such a charge he naturally rebelled until the day of his death. The most cruel feature of the whole affair, however, and the one which probably did more than anything else to sadden and becloud the remaining days of Judge Holt's life, was the personal disloyalty of an eminent citizen of his own State, who had been his intimate friend from youth. I refer to James Speed, Andrew Johnson's Attorney General. In 1883, after most of the prominent actors in the scene were dead and the animosities caused by the controversy were largely allayed--at a time, too, when Holt realized that he was growing old and recognized more keenly than ever the importance of leaving behind a final refutation of the calumnies that had been heaped upon him--he appealed to Speed, who, he believed he had reason to a.s.sume was in possession of the exact facts of the case; but all that could be wrung from him were evasive words to the effect that he saw the pet.i.tion for clemency in the President's office, without intimating whether it was before or after Mrs. Surratt's execution, and that he did not "feel at liberty to speak of what was said at cabinet meetings." An exchange of letters followed between the two in which Speed excused himself for six months on the pleas of bereavement and press of business, and that he had lost his gla.s.ses, when he finally replied:--"After very mature and deliberate consideration, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot say more than I have said." It is no wonder, then, that Holt, driven to desperation by such treatment, wrote to Speed:--"Your forbearance towards Andrew Johnson, of whose dishonorable conduct you have been so well advised, is a great mystery to me. With the stench of his baseness in your nostrils you have been all tenderness for him, while for me ... you have been as implacable as fate."

While spending the summer of 1888 in Princeton, Ma.s.sachusetts, I read in the _North American Review_ for July of the same year the correspondence relating to the Surratt question between Holt and Speed in 1883. Knowing Judge Holt as I did, having firm faith in his version of the controversy, believing him to be a victim of gross injustice and realizing withal how keenly through all these years he had felt the sting of misrepresentation, I wrote him a lengthy letter. It was not long before I received his reply, and I copy it here, as I believe it casts an additional sidelight upon a subject which caused this brilliant and high-minded gentleman bitter suffering from which he never wholly recovered. I add several more letters written to me by him which are beautiful in expression but pathetic in character.

WASHINGTON, August 26th, 1888.

Mrs. M. Gouverneur,

My dear Madam:

Your kind letter of the 14th instant was quite a surprise, but a very agreeable one I a.s.sure you. My reply has been thus long delayed from an impression that it would probably more certainly reach your hands if addressed to you at Frederick.

I have read and re-read your letter with increasing gratification and thankfulness. Truly am I grateful for the friendly spirit that prompted you to make so thorough an examination of the Speed correspondence as your _resume_ of it discloses. That _resume_ is in every way admirable. It has the clearness and logical force of a first-cla.s.s lawyer's brief. Indeed, I was on the point of a.s.serting that you have a good lawyer's head on your shoulders, but prefer saying that you have a head which obeying the inspirations of your heart enables you to discern and _appreciate_ the truth and extricate it, as well, from the entanglements of chicanery and fraud. Be a.s.sured, my dear Madam, that I shall treasure up your letter fondly, at once as a consolation and as a powerful support of the endeavors which I have been making for years to rescue my name from the obloquy of an accusation, than which nothing falser or fouler ever fell from the lips of men or devils.

It was a severe shock for my faith in human nature when General Speed--with whom I had maintained relations of cordial friendship for some fifty years--suddenly allowed himself to become a compliant coadjutor of Andrew Johnson in his diabolical plot to destroy me. The _role_ of suppressing the truth, which he voluntarily a.s.sumed for himself and in which--without explanation or defense--he persisted down to his grave, amounted fully to this and to nothing less. Yet during all of that time he _knew_ me to be innocent, as well as I myself knew and know it, and this he never denied.

Alas, Alas! what a masquerade is human life, and amid its heady currents how rarely do we pause to think of the possibilities that lurk under the disguise of its spotless reputations!

I should be rejoiced to hear that the Summer has strewed flowers and only flowers on the paths of your "outing," and that you will be able to return to Washington glad of heart and reinvigorated for the social duties in which you find and bestow so much pleasure. For my own isolated and infirm life home was thought to be the best place, and hence I have remained here happily finding under my own roof a contentment that has left me without envy of those whose more fortunate feet have sought the seash.o.r.e and the mountain slopes. You yourself, however, acted wisely and well in going away, since the world is still pressing to _your_ lips the sparkling cups, which for my own are now but a dim, receding memory.

I congratulate you on Miss Rose's approaching marriage which you have been so good as to announce, and sincerely hope that all the bright visions which the coming event must be awakening will have an abounding fulfilment. The invitation with which you have honored me is accepted with thanks, and I shall attend the ceremony with the higher gratification, realizing as I shall how closely your own happiness is bound up with that of your daughter.[3]

Faithfully and gratefully your friend,

J. HOLT.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3d, 1888.

My dear Mrs. Gouverneur:

I am in receipt of your very welcome letter of the 1st instant and hasten to send the "Index" as requested. Hope it may be of service in ill.u.s.trating and supporting your application. I shall preserve the Admiral's [Rear Admiral Francis A. Roe, U.S.N.] emphatic words as a cherished testimonial. The language of Mrs. Stanard is also very grateful to me. Her favorable opinion is the more prized and precious because she has known me so long and so well.

And now, my dear good friend, how can I sufficiently thank you for your generous interest in this trouble of mine--which has been a thorn in my life for so many years--and for your surpa.s.singly kind offices which have been so effectively exercised in connection with it? Be a.s.sured that while my poor words cannot adequately express it, my heart will always throb with grat.i.tude for the tokens of good will with which you have so honored and gladdened me.

I feel much complimented by so early a receipt of the invitation to Miss Rose's wedding, and I shall have great joy in being present.

Faithfully yours,